The Ubuntu project is getting more and more fishy. After extending business partnerships (Dell, HP, ASUS,ETC...) and establishing its name as a leading Linux OS and base, Ubuntu has taken a new path and that is the commercial one. Mark Shuttleworth, Benevolent Dictator for Life, In a Guardian interview in May 2008, said that the Canonical business model was service provision and explained that Canonical was not yet close to profitability. Canonical also claimed it will wait for the business to turn into a profitable one within another 3 to 5 years (2008+ 5 years = 2013 ). He regarded Canonical as positioning itself as demand for services related to free software rose. This strategy has been compared to Red Hat's business strategies in the 1990s. However, in an early 2009 New York Times article, Shuttleworth said that Canonical's revenue was "creeping" towards $30 million, the company's break-even point. In 2007, Canonical launched an International online shop selling s

Last edited by Zorba on Sat Mar 30, 2013 4:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think that too as we benefit from the hard work of Debian developers much more as from Canonical. However I think there should be two LMDE editions:

a.) LMDE stable which tracks Debian stable (for people who want to have a stable system until it dies)b.) LMDE current, (the current model with the upgrade packs is clever and for people which want more current upstream applications)

Will know whether or not some conspiracy. It is clear that Ubuntu is not what it was before, but the good thing is that its derivatives are getting increasingly better (Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu). We will have to wait for 14.04 LTS brings. It is very clear (more than before) that versions 13.xx banks will test to see who is ultimately in version 14.04 LTS.-

For now, on my computer live two Linux systems that work perfectly: Linux Mint 13 KDE LTS and Kubuntu 12.04 LTS. For now no Ubuntu (and its spyware Unity) on my computer. And I see that more and more people who used to use Ubuntu are switching to Linux Mint, great news, no doubt .... Greetings.-

teatime wrote:I think that too as we benefit from the hard work of Debian developers much more as from Canonical. However I think there should be two LMDE editions:

a.) LMDE stable which tracks Debian stable (for people who want to have a stable system until it dies)b.) LMDE current, (the current model with the upgrade packs is clever and for people which want more current upstream applications)

I don't mind that they do that, if they do that to keep their product (Ubuntu and versions) available, and if they still intend to maintain an open presence and not become commercial only

Although for a Linux distributor that (commercial only) may no longer be a viable business model--Red Hat has/had enough problems trying to compete in the windows business space

Since everyone (or at least we are told that) uses Ms Office suite for business, then OSS applications that can do the same job are not being considered--even the USA military abandoned a reliable UNIX system on the equipment to go to an all-in windows OS deployment: for no technical reason

As for a secret/private development branch, that is allowed in Gnu Linux: we already use blobs (nvidia, AMD/Ati..)--only Debian or bsd* system have made real objections to the practice; but as users we will continue to add binary(vendor) supplied functions/applications/features if it improves the user expereince

Linux will never be transparent enough to a windows user: that is a moving target and basically a fool's game to try and match feature-for-feature, even if we sometimes are first or better..--we will always be down in place for the majority of consumers